What would you think if your government told you which brand of car to drive on public roads? The same way the public administration is required to be neutral on this, it should not decide which software you use when reading PDF documents. The state should offer choice and especially promote software that respects its citizens' freedom.

With the example of PDF readers the FSFE raises general awareness of proprietary software advertisements on public administration's websites since September 2010. Our Petition For The Removal Of Proprietary Software Advertising On Public Institution Websites was signed by 80 organisations, 58 businesses and 2438 individuals. Up until now we contacted 2104 public administrations, and managed to close 552 bugs (26%). So 552 federal government departments, municipalities, and other administrations removed the advertisement, or added additional references to Free Software PDF readers.

We will continue fixing the remaining bugs. However, we also received a lot of feedback from the public administration and other institutions and political entities. One big task is to improve the PDF readers website, as it is one of our key tools in this campaign. To update it and give it a more user-friendly interface we need your donations.

With your donation, we will be able to implement the planned new features for the website until the 1st of February and after it, for its maintenance.

If we get more money, we will contact, once again, the remaining administrations and inform them about our improvements, so they can stop advertising proprietary PDF readers. All additional donations will be used to pay postal and printing expenses.

The fundraising page uses the Ulule platform (Update: Turn off Javascript before you follow the link to the donation page, to avoid running nonfree software. There you can check the different rewards, a website mock-up design and you will find updates about our progress.

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About FSFE

Free Software Foundation Europe is a charity that empowers users to
control technology.

Software is deeply involved in all aspects of our lives. It is important
that this technology empowers rather than restricts us. Free Software
gives everybody the rights to use, understand, adapt and share software.
These rights help support other fundamental rights like freedom of
speech, freedom of press and privacy.